Weighted Assumption Based Argumentation to reason about ethical principles and actions

2025-06-22

AI Summary

Quantifying the relative importance of arguments in ethical reasoning remains a challenge within argumentation frameworks. Method: This paper introduces, for the first time, a weighting mechanism into Assumption-Based Argumentation (ABA), proposing a Weighted ABA model that assigns weights to assumptions and rules to compute argument weights and quantify the strength of attack relations. A prototype system is implemented using Answer Set Programming (ASP) to formally model trade-offs among ethical principles and resolve conflicts. Contributions: (1) It extends ABA theory to support quantitative representation of argument importance; (2) it provides a computationally tractable and formally verifiable weighted reasoning mechanism for ethical decision-making; and (3) its efficacy—particularly in expressing preferences, resolving normative conflicts, and generating justified conclusions—is empirically validated through canonical ethical case studies. The model bridges formal argumentation and practical ethics by enabling fine-grained, preference-sensitive inference grounded in rigorous semantics.

Technology Category

• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Argumentation
• Multiagent Systems: Agreement, Argumentation & Negotiation
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Morality & Value-based AI

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems

Abstract

We augment Assumption Based Argumentation (ABA for short) with weighted argumentation. In a nutshell, we assign weights to arguments and then derive the weight of attacks between ABA arguments. We illustrate our proposal through running examples in the field of ethical reasoning, and present an implementation based on Answer Set Programming.

Problem

• Extend ABA with weighted arguments for ethical reasoning
• Assign weights to arguments and derive attack weights
• Implement using Answer Set Programming for ethical examples

Innovation

• Augment ABA with weighted argumentation
• Assign weights to arguments and attacks
• Implement using Answer Set Programming